The present invention relates generally to container molecules and, more specifically, to the modular assembly of metal-organic super-containers incorporating calixarenes generally and sulfonylcalixarenes and sulfinylcalixares, specifically.
Container molecules with well-defined hollow structures have attracted significant interest in recent years.1-11 These intriguing molecular receptors contain concave surfaces suitable for binding a variety of guests and offer unique chemical micro-environments relevant for a number of applications, including encapsulation of otherwise unstable species,12,13 promotion of chemical transformations,14-17 storage and separation of gases,9,18 transportation of small molecules,19,20 and templated formation of monodisperse nanoparticles.21 Nature has provided numerous elegant examples of supramolecular containers, such as viruses and other protein assemblies (e.g., ferritin), in which the highly organized structure of the biomolecules is key to their sophisticated function.22 Several research groups have presented a number of beautiful container systems that are based on covalent,1,8,9,12 coordination,3,5-7,10,11 or hydrogen bonding2,4,23 interactions. However, synthetic tools accessible to chemists for preparing molecular containers remain generally limited. Many artificial receptors have a relatively simple structure and few synthetic systems can match the function of their biological counterparts.